​The summer before my oldest began kindergarten we were working on building our house which is miles from town. We were in a rush one day, hurrying back for a t-ball game. I don’t remember where he got it, but he had gum in his mouth, and I could see him playing with it in the rear-view mirror. I told him to stop and keep it in his mouth, but I didn’t have time to mess with pulling over and taking it, so I just continued to nag. Pretty soon I glanced up, and he had a very long string of gum coming from his mouth to his hand. He caught me looking at him and with his special look that I have come to call his ‘HA-HA-Look-what-I’m-gonna-do-now’ look, he wrapped the string of gum around his head. It was long enough to string around about three times. He patted it hard into his hair all over and just grinned as I sat helplessly in the front seat.
When we got home, I jumped in the shower immediately, trying to hurry as much as possible since I still had to try to get gum out of his hair. When I emerged, I found him with scissors in hand. He had tried to ‘help’ by cutting the gum out of his hair. It appeared he mostly only cut the hair and missed all the parts containing gum. There were random chunks of gum mixed in with nearly bald spots all over his head. It was too late to do anything about it. I sometimes wish smart phones and constant picture taking had been a thing back then so I would have the photographic memories of this type of event. Of course, there was nothing hilarious about it at the time, so maybe I would have been too mortified to take a picture anyway. I put a hat on him and told him not to take it off, even to bat, just put the helmet over it. We headed off to t-ball and shaved his whole head that night.
After that, he was never allowed to have gum. EVER.

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This is a series of stories about my oldest child. During his early years, I spent my on-line time reviewing symptom checklists for a variety of behavioral disorders, and I was quite sure we would have to send him to military school one day. I felt completely defeated by his behavior on many occasions. I have long struggled to find the right way to share these stories on my blog. I finally decided just to write them as they are, with no great revelation about their impact. (Though a couple do include a follow-up disciplinary technique that worked!) My purpose in sharing these stories is three-fold. I hope to provide a good laugh, to give a thank-goodness-its-not-just-my-kid OR an at-least-my-kid-hasn’t-done-that feeling, and also to instill hope that your ‘that’ kid can turn out to be as amazing as mine someday. He still drives me somewhat crazy, but at 18 he is a great person with a bright future (and was not sent to military school)! Some personality traits that are horrific in a young child are pretty dang awesome in a teen ready to head out into the world.

​ Then, when he was in kindergarten, another mom brought some for a party game.
I was completely unaware up until this point that most kindergartners could handle chewing gum without a problem. I assumed that they were all as much a menace to society with it as my own and was sure this woman who brought in 20 pieces of gum had lost her mind! I jumped in, desperately attempting to assuage the bloodbath of stickiness that was sure to ensue.
“You must keep your gum IN your mouth everyone! If you don’t, you will have to spit it in the trash,” I warned, feeling all superior to this silly woman who brought gum for a bunch of six-year-olds.
Well, prepare to see me humbled!
Not one child removed gum from his or her mouth. Not one, except for mine. And yeah, I picked that battle. I told him he did not get to play anymore because he was making a mess with his gum and had to throw it away. Of course, he ignored me, walked away and then looked back at me while stringing it out of his mouth again. I tried to grab for it a couple of times, and he continued to taunt me with it. I did not want to make a scene, but for some reason, I felt the need to save face and win, so I pretended to let it go and casually got close enough to him, pried open his jaw, and snatched the gum from his mouth, nearly losing a finger in the process. I was on the school’s sub list at the time, and his teacher later said she had been thinking about asking me to sub, but after the party thought maybe that wouldn’t be best. Yeah, no kidding lady. But hey, at least we didn’t have to shave his head at the end of the day!
A few years ago, I subbed frequently for a preschool class with a very sweet little boy who displayed a much different personality when his mom showed up for a party. I just wanted to go hug her and say, “I am so glad to find someone else whose kid turns into a hideous beast when she shows up!”

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I am the mother of seven children ranging from teens to a toddler, living out in the middle of nowhere, USA. I aim to hone the craft of giving advice without pretending to have this whole mom thing figured out. I am Christian, but not the really nice kind that is good at it. I am also conservative, but I promise not to be in your face with political agendas very often. I like to infuse humor into my writing, so don't freak out if you are offended or ﻿appalled by what you read here. There is a very fine line between serious advice and sarcastic hyperbole.

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